About Linda

Linda Cockey, DMA, NCTM, is Professor Emerita and Pianist at Salisbury University in Maryland where she has taught a Wellness in Performance course since 1999 with an athletic trainer and clinical psychologist. In this course, they focus on how to achieve peak performances, optimal practice techniques and injury prevention. She also taught applied and class piano, music history and form and analysis. Currently she is on the adjunct faculty at SU teaching piano in the Presto Outreach Program.

She has been active as a teacher, presenter, book reviewer, editor, adjudicator, clinician, performer and has been promoting the areas of expertise she is passionate about, that includes musician wellness, health and safety, injury prevention and teaching strategies for developing healthy practice techniques. Due to her work in this area, she was invited as a Distinguished Professor at Shandong University in Jinan China to teach piano and lecture on musician wellness. This experience included teaching both undergraduate and graduate piano majors. The late Reginald Gerig, author of Famous Pianist’s and Their Technique asked her to write a bibliography focusing on wellness resources for pianists that is included in his Indiana University Press edition.

Currently, she chairs the Editorial Board for the Music Teachers National Association’s (MTNA) e-Journal until March 2023; having been a member of the board since 2013. She is also a member of the wellness committee for the National Conference on Keyboard Pedagogy (NCKP). Dr. Cockey has been a member of the College Music Society’s Musicians’ Health Committee where she was a committee member since 2016 and co-chairs the committee until June 2023.

Dr. Cockey is a frequent presenter on musician’s health issues and healthy teaching strategies for the Music Teachers National Association; the National Conference on Keyboard Pedagogy (NCKP), the College Music Society (CMS), and the International Society for Music Education (ISME).

She is currently working with national colleagues Gail Berenson and Charles Turon on a new program titled Teaching for Health, Teaching for Life (THTL) with Music Teachers National Association (MTNA) and the Florida State Music Teachers Association (FSMTA) as a pilot certificate of completion program for teachers interested in developing further skills on implementing healthy teaching techniques into their studios. With this program, they are writing a new manual on teaching the whole student for future publication.

Dr. Cockey has also done presentations for the Maryland State Music Teachers Association, the Hoff-Barthelson Music School in Scarsdale, New York, the Performing Arts Medical Association (PAMA) as well as several other organizations. Linda authored MTNA’s Annotated Bibliography on Wellness Resources database that was first launched in 1989. During her long career at SU, she performed many times with the Salisbury Symphony Orchestra, as well as in Germany and several universities on the East coast.

Her interest in piano began at the age of five, growing up in a Philadelphia suburb where she was given many opportunities to perform in master classes as a youth with artist teachers from New York, Philadelphia, and Washington D.C. areas. She pursued her undergraduate degree in piano performance at Lebanon Valley College in Annville, Pennsylvania where she was invited for three summers to study at Bay View Conservatory in Northern Michigan. Her master’s degree is from Temple University, and she received her Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the Catholic University of America in Piano Pedagogy. Her teachers included Susan Starr, the late Thomas Mastroianni and Bela Nagy, as well as Dr. Barbara English Maris for piano pedagogy.

Linda Cockey with the late Reginald Gerig

At Salisbury University, she served as chair of the Department of music (2003-2012) and under her leadership, the program received NASM (National Association of Schools of Music) accreditation for the first time. During her time as chair, the department more than doubled in student and faculty growth, launched the first music technology track in the state of Maryland, obtained all new university owned pianos, opened the Presto Performing Arts Education Outreach program, and went through two NASM accreditations. She received the Fulton School of Liberal Arts Annual Department Chair’s Award for excellent service and just before her retirement survived once again as interim department chair. As a result of her work and attention to detail, she was invited to become an accreditation visitor for NASM, first as a team member and then as a team leader. Linda is passionate about nationally accredited programs and NASM’s commitment to artistic standards that includes musicians’ health and safety. She co-authored three NASM Self-Studies between 2005 and 2018 for the music program at SU. Linda also served on the Academic Leadership and Administration Committee for the College Music Society (CMS) and has presented at the National Association of Schools in Music (NASM) on Crisis Management. She was invited to write about leadership and her article “A Chair’s Toolbox” was published in CMS’s Newsletter.